Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century

This book addresses the question of how we can best feed the ten billion or so people who will likely inhabit the Earth by the middle of the twenty-first century. Vaclav Smil asks whether human ingenuity can produce enough food to support healthy and vigorous lives for all these people without irreparably damaging the integrity of the biosphere.

What makes this book different from other books on the world food situation is its consideration of the complete food cycle, from agriculture to post-harvest losses and processing to eating and discarding. Taking a scientific approach, Smil espouses neither the catastrophic view that widespread starvation is imminent nor the cornucopian view that welcomes large population increases as the source of endless human inventiveness. He shows how we can make more effective use of current resources and suggests that if we increase farming efficiency, reduce waste, and transform our diets, future needs may not be as great as we anticipate.

Smil's message is that the prospects may not be as bright as we would like, but the outlook is hardly disheartening. Although inaction, late action, or misplaced emphasis may bring future troubles, we have the tools to steer a more efficient course. There are no insurmountable biophysical reasons we cannot feed humanity in the decades to come while easing the burden that modern agriculture puts on the biosphere.

Can we do it? Plowing his furrow between the doomsayers and the blind optimists, agriculture researcher Vaclav Smil believes that our planet can sustain more than 10 billion people, and he makes his arguments clearly and plainly in Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century. His prescription is fairly simple: waste less, eat less, and produce more--and he shows just how easy it could be. Just like doctors' advice that the key to losing weight is to eat less and exercise more, which is ignored in favor of simpler and less effective plans, Smil's ideas are just unglamorous enough to fall by the wayside. Why not take the easy way out and decide either that we're all doomed or that market forces will mysteriously solve problems that they have yet to acknowledge exist?

Smil prefers to look coolly at our habits and suggest how we can make moderate changes to our production and consumption and reap great benefits of efficiency--and better health. You won't be surprised to learn that beef takes a beating in the race to convert solar energy to food, but you might not know that pigs and chickens are practically neck and neck. Of course, all of our two- and four-legged friends are eating the dust of the grains and vegetables, proving again that slow and steady wins the race. If Smil's ideas can get the attention they deserve, and if as he says "China could do it," then we ought to be able to look forward to an equitable, sustainable place at the table for everyone, even as our population reaches 11 digits. --Rob Lightner